THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DRINK!
Brewpubs take the challenge at Chicagoland Shootout
By Nicholas Day
Special to the Tribune
Published February 1, 2006
These days, local brewpubs aren't satisfied with serving some of the
best beers out there. They want the best food, too.
So no one brought peanuts at the eighth annual Chicagoland Brewpub and
Microbrewery Shootout recently, a food and beer competition sponsored by
the Chicago Beer Society (CBS). There were, however, port wine beef
medallions with wild berry salad and walnut balsamic vinaigrette, the
entry of Brass Restaurant and Brewery of South Barrington.
The Shootout's sold-out crowd at the Irish-American Heritage Center in
Chicago rated the medallions "best food," closely followed by the
jalapeno garlic-seared shrimp and the amber ale-braised pork ribs.
The beer aficionados sampled the food and drink of 16 brewpubs that came
from as far as Rock Island (Blue Cat Brew Pub) and Munster, Ind. (Three
Floyds Brewing Co.), bringing with them butane stoves and kegs of
evidence of the vitality of regional brewing.
"People want to be part of this event," said Jeff Sparrow, who organized
the event for the beer society. "Winning means a lot to them."
The top beer, Saison Also Rises from Rock Bottom Chicago, was brewed in
the style of Belgian farmhouse ale, or saison. The names of its
competitors also sounded like anything but local: Robert Burns Scottish
Ale from Goose Island Beer Co., Bourbon Barrel-aged Imperial Stout from
Aurora's America's Brewing Co. and Belgian Dubbel from the Onion Pub &
Brewery in Lake Barrington.
It was an impressive diversity of brewing styles--a range that almost no
American brewers were producing just a few decades ago.
Positive changes
The oldest Chicago-area microbrewery, Goose Island, opened in 1988--a
decade after the American craft brew revolution began in California--and
the growth since has been exponential.
Although a few local brewers, such as Three Floyds and Two Brothers
Brewing Co. of Warrenville, have followed Goose Island's lead in
bottling their beer, the majority have not.
Bottling requires a lot of space and money: a warehouse for production
plus the expense of bottles, labels, packaging and shipping. So a lot of
brewing innovation happens on a smaller scale in brewpubs, where the
essential overhead is a keg and a pint glass.
That means that many of the best beers brewed in Chicago, and almost all
of those that were on tap at the competition, will never sit in a liquor
store's fridge.
That's not to say that brewers wouldn't like to see their beer there.
Matt Van Wyk, who brews for Flossmoor Station in Flossmoor, has
considered selling his beers in cans, a more cost-efficient medium that
also has storage benefits (it eliminates light damage and decreases
degradation from oxygen). But for the present, his beers, such as a
"dry-peppered" wheat ale spiked with a few Anaheim and habanero chilies,
are only on tap in Flossmoor.
Van Wyk, who started as an enthusiastic home brewer, gave up his day job
as a science teacher a few years ago for a few poorly paid brewing gigs.
Statistically, it wasn't a smart move: As Van Wyk said, there are only
so many brewer positions. Now the brewmaster at Flossmoor, he said
brewing "is like a craft. It's like being a carpenter or an electrician
in that you learn a lot on the job."
Many local brewers have worked with each other or studied together at
the Siebel Institute of Technology, a brewing school located above the
Goose Island brewpub on Clybourn.
"There's a real camaraderie among brewers," said Randy Mosher, a board
member of the beer society and author of several books on beer. "Beer's
a mission."
Itinerant local brewer Greg Browne, who started brewing at Goose Island
and now heads Mickey Finn's in Libertyville and teaches a monthly "beer
school" at the Map Room bar in Chicago, said he has "worked at every
place in Chicago and at some that don't exist anymore." Browne arrived
in Chicago from Australia in the early 1990s, when quality craft beer
was still an upstart.
"I didn't like American beers, the mass-produced stuff, so I started
brewing my own," he said.
Menus to match
It's not only the beer in Chicagoland that has improved.
"The first year we did this, people brought hot dogs and chili," said
Dave Phillips, president of the Chicago Beer Society. Now, offerings
include ostrich and rosemary satay over sticky rice, the entry of Three
Floyds, which just opened a brewpub alongside its microbrewery In
Munster, Ind. A few brewpubs, like Brass or Emmett's, which has three
suburban locations, look more like white-tablecloth restaurants than
neighborhood taverns.
An auxiliary goal of the Shootout is to demonstrate the flexibility of
beer with food--there's even an award for the best beer and food pairing
(won by Rock Bottom Chicago for its saison and shrimp combo). Beer
enthusiasts are tired of wine getting all the attention.
"Beer's much broader," Mosher said. He cites beer's highly variable
alcohol content (from 3 to 20 percent) and carbonation (from ticklish to
scouring), which makes it more adaptable to a wider range of food, as
well as its backbone of bitterness from hops (which cuts through fat and
refreshes the palate).
But the brewpubs didn't limit their food to cheese or shrimp or even
ostrich. A few tackled dessert too. Govnor's Public House in Lake in the
Hills offered an Absolution Ale that was soft, rich with malt and a
perfect match for a raspberry-caramel-chocolate cheesecake.
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune